Memo from Medellin

Colombia’s second largest city has shed its image as a dangerous place. Paul Harris writes a memo of this new Medellín moment.

Published in The City Paper, Bogota, September 2008

Medellín is a name that conjures exotic images of the days when drug baron Pablo Escobar made it a red zone by declaring war on the state, putting a bounty on the head of the police and using teenage killers or sicarios to settle scores. “It was crazy as the police were killing each other for the bounty Escobar put on them,” remembers journalist Lorenza Gil.

The hail of bullets that allowed the city to breathe again one Friday afternoon in December 1993 is marvelously depicted by another famous city son Fernando Botero in La muerte de Pablo Escobar (The Death of Pablo Escobar). “I awoke to a noise I thought was kids letting off firecrackers, but it was the police shooting Pablo. Property prices in the city doubled that weekend and there was a three-day party,” says US lawyer and gambler Richard Westerly.

The Escobar days deeply marked a fatherless generation and are a common theme for artists like Botero and writers like Fernando Vallejo Rendón and Jorge Franco.

While Pablo’s death was the start, the revolution in Medellin’s fortunes came with improving security under the Uribe presidency and the city fathers who bet that the city could be something else. The ragged ladies of the brothels near the Parque Berrio (Berrio Park ) were supplanted by the voluptuous bronze forms gifted by the Botero donation, lending the city an image to build upon. “The Antioquia Museum has always been there but no one ever went. Now it has become part of our identity and a reference for the city,” says Gil.

Former Medellín Mayor Sergio Fajardo Valderrama (2004-2007) projected a new metropolis to the world and began social investment programs that primed it to evolve into an international business center and changed its landscape through expanding highways, the Metro and inaugurating the super cable car Metrocable.

And then there are the landmark buildings, such as the new BanColombia HQ under construction, the Library of Antioquia and the towering black blocks of the España Library.

This softening of Medellin’s crispy rind has enabled the bandeja paisa to become far more diverse through the influx of what entrepreneur Lina Insaza calls “healthy money”. The city is no longer adverse to the ostentatious outward signs of wealth that its citizens once avoided. Sneakers are pimped and showy with bling whereas “in the bad days, people didn’t walk because the sicarios would kill you for your Reeboks,” says Gil, and the car bomb bang has been replaced by the screech of supersized low-profile SUV wheels that spin as they horse power up El Poblado’s rain soaked hills. “Having a big car meant you could be a target for kidnapping, but with the fall in the US dollar, everyone is buying them now,” says Insaza.

Money and emergent narcissistic self-confidence are evident in the technicolour braces straightening smiles citywide and the giant-size billboards with visions of ‘fast’ fashion which distract our days, warm our nights and hark of a new Paisa feminism. “The internet and cable TV have given us the opportunity to internationalize and women have started to value themselves more. They want to work and earn their own money and will not stay home with the kids,” says Insaza.

The nefarious side of this recently minted equalitarianism has seen the buy, buy, buy impulse of consumerism wave bye bye to many traditional paisa values. Medellín is a silicon valley uplifted by the surgeon’s art as the de rigeur gift for many teenagers are kikas or breast implants, easing the city transformation from a red zone to pink zone. “There is greater promiscuity and girls, even from good families, are sometimes called out as escorts in order get a new pair of jeans,” says Insaza.

The Carrera 70 nightspots, once the hang out of gangs, are safe and thriving in this new age, while the residential neighbourhood Parque Lleras has mutated into an international restaurant and bar hotspot where one can groove to house music all night long at B Lounge, El Deck or Click, or Latin flavours at Oz, for those who disdain Mango’s dancing cowgirl midgets.

Promo teams roam the city streets showing Medellin is now speed dialing and not speed dying, as seen by the blue eight-foot Movistar ears reprising Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights in Parque Lleras ... or is that the aguardiente?